While pumping muds down an oilfield well particulate can come back up the oilfield well and damage equipment. Damaged equipment can explode, causing toxic spills to the environment. Damaged equipment can also kill or maim workers at the oilfield well site.
An oilfield well can have a casing head supporting an outer casing string. A casing hanger can be positioned in the casing head to support an inner string or production casing string. A tubing head is typically positioned above the casing head.
During normal production operations, the tubing head can support a tubing hanger and production tubing. The production casing string can extend downwards into a hydrocarbon bearing formation.
It is common to fracture a new well to increase the production capability of the new well. Generally, in this process, a sand bearing slurry is pumped down into a formation at very high pressures. Sand particles can become embedded in small cracks in the formation and can wedge the small cracks open; thereby increasing the flow of produced fluid, such as oil, natural gas, or water.
The tubing head with associated valves can control the flow of the pressurized fluid coming from the fractionation of the new well. The tubing head can be damaged by particles in the pressurized fluid, such as the sand particles.
A need exists for a wellhead protection tool to protect portions of the tubing head and gate valves for the safety of the workers, and to prevent spills in the occurrence of explosions.
A need exists for a removable wellhead protection tool that does not require pulling of an entire production string with bridge plugs and ball drop plugs.
A need exists for a wellhead protection tool that saves significant costs and time in the management of wells.
A need exists for a simple wellhead protection tool that is easily replaced without requiring major portions of production strings to be pulled from the well, such as when the wellhead protection tool exhibits signs of failure.
The present embodiments meet these needs.
The present embodiments are detailed below with reference to the listed Figures.